WASHINGTON — Leonard Silverstein, a Washington-based lawyer and arts patron who started a series of prominent tax-law guidebooks, died Feb. 14 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 96.

As a young Harvard-educated legal adviser to the Treasury Department, Mr. Silverstein helped shape the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, a massive overhaul of the federal income tax system. In 1959, he created Tax Management Porfolios, authoritative texts for the nation’s accounting firms.

The next year, he co-founded Silverstein and Mullens, a firm specializing in tax law and estate planning. In 2000, it became a division of what is now the Pittsburgh-based Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.

Along with Frank Sinatra and Kennedy Center chairman Roger Stevens, Mr. Silverstein sat in the 1980s on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, where he promoted corporate philanthropy.

He was board president of the National Symphony Orchestra Association at a time when the NSO was beset by multimillion-dollar shortfalls. He helped management and musicians a compromise contract.